Polymer materials with good physical properties have an enormous market and find applications in various fields. However, most of the existing materials have one or more defects. Many of the polymer products in the market today are very hard or brittle and cannot be manipulated easily with tunable physical properties. In addition, some of them are not environment-friendly. For example, many synthetic polymer materials are flammable or have a tendency to produce toxic residues. While some of the recently reported processes sought to minimize these drawbacks (see for example Zhang, et al., ACS Appl Mater Interfaces 2015; 7(5):3352-61), there still exist issues in product quality and cost efficiency.
It is thus desirable to develop an environmentally friendly process for the production of bio-materials with low cost and high mechanical flexibility.